Days of Sorrow

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the period of the Revolutionary “Terror,” commonly dated from September 1793 through July 1794. Unfortunately, we know far less about Colson’s views during this period because of the repression and arrests of “suspects” throughout Paris and Colson’s caution in conveying any news of events to Lemaigre. What is clear, however, is that he encountered several developments that brought him considerable personal unhappiness. First, was the souring of relations with his longtime employer, the Longaunay family, and his effective replacement as chief confidant by the marquis’s valet de chambre, Monsieur Drot. Second, was the breakdown, for reasons that are not entirely clear, of his friendship with Roch Lemaigre. Third was the so-called movement of “dechristianization” that saw the arrest of his parish priest, the closing of his church, and the attempt to replace Christianity with various Revolutionary religions. As he lay dying in 1797, his parish church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie had been sold and was being dismantled for scrap limestone.